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Battle of Vilnius (1944)
Part of World War II
Date July 1944 Location Vilnius, Lithuania Result Soviet Victory
Combatants
Soviet Union Polish Home Army	Nazi Germany
Commanders
Pavel Rotmistrov	Rainer Stahel
Strength
?	15,000
Casualties
?	8,000 killed; 5,000 captured (Soviet est)

v • d • e Eastern Front

Barbarossa – Baltic Sea – Finland – Leningrad and Baltics – Crimea and Caucasus – Moscow – 1st Rzhev-Vyazma – 2nd Kharkov – Blue – Stalingrad – Velikiye Luki – 2nd Rzhev-Sychevka – Kursk – 2nd Smolensk – Dnieper – 2nd Kiev – Korsun – Hube's Pocket – Baltic – Bagration – Lvov-Sandomierz – Lublin-Brest – Balkans (Iassy-Kishinev) – Budapest – Vistula-Oder – East Prussia – East Pomerania – Silesia – Berlin – Prague – Vienna

Leningrad and Baltics 1941 - 1944
Toropets-Kholm – Demyansk Pocket – Spark – Polar Star – Krasny Bor – Lenino– Leningrad Approaches – Narva – Vilnius – Baltic

The Battle of Vilnius occurred as part of Operation Bagration, the great summer offensive by the Red Army against the Wehrmacht, in June and July, 1944. It lasted from the 7th to the 13th of July, 1944, and ended with a Soviet victory. Some three thousand German soldiers of the encircled garrison of Vilnius managed to break out, including the commander, Rainer Stahel.

Contents 1 Prelude 2 The Battle 2.1 The breakout attempt 2.2 Contribution by the Polish Home Army 3 Outcome 4 See also 5 Footnotes 6 References 7 External links

From 23 June 1944, the Red Army conducted a major offensive operation under the code-name Operation Bagration, liberating Belorussia, and driving towards the Polish border and the Baltic Sea coast. At the beginning of July the front line had been torn open at the seam of German Army Group Center and Army Group North, roughly on a line from Vitebsk to Vilnius. While a large part of the Soviet forces was employed to reduce the German pocket at Minsk, the Soviet high command decided to exploit the situation along the breach to the north, by turning mobile formations towards the major traffic centre of Vilnius, in eastern Lithuania. For the German high command, it became imperative to hold Vilnius, because without it it would become almost impossible to re-establish a sustainable connection between the two German army groups, and to hold the Red Army off outside East Prussia and away from the Baltic Sea shores.

During the battle, the Soviet 5th Guards Tank Army of Pavel Rotmistrov, which was placed under the command of 3rd Belorussian Front, engaged the German garrison of Vilnius (consisting of Grenadier Regiment 399 and Artillery Regiment 240 of the 170th Infantry Division, Grenadier Regiment 1067, a battalion from the 16th Parachute (Fallschirmjager) Regiment, the anti-tank battalion of the 256th Infantry Division and other units) under the command of Luftwaffe Major-General Rainer Stahel. It also engaged a relief force from 3rd Panzer Army under the command of Colonel-General Georg-Hans Reinhardt. Soviet forces managed to encircle the city on 8 July, trapping the garrison, who had been ordered to hold their positions at all costs. The Soviet 35th Guards Tank Brigade initially took the airport, defended by the battalion of paratroopers; intense street-by-street fighting then commenced as the Soviets attempted to reduce the defence.^[1]

On 12 July, 6th Panzer Division, organised into two groups (Pössl and Stahl) attacked eastwards from outside the encirclement (the divisional commander and Colonel-General Reinhardt personally accompanied the advance group). The opposing Soviet forces, taken by surprise and hampered by extended lines of supply, were not able to hold the cordon and 6th Panzer's forces were able to advance some 50km to link up with forward elements from the Vilnius garrison. A fierce battle on the banks of the Neris ensued as men of the Polish Home Army unsuccessfully attempted to stop the relief troops. In the city itself, a Soviet attack on the morning of 13 July managed to split the German forces into two pockets centred around the prison and the observatory; around 3,000 Germans escaped through the corridor opened by the 6th Panzer Division before Soviet forces closed the gap. Even so, 12-13,000 German troops were lost in the city, which was finally liberated towards the evening of 13 July.^[2]

Despite the Soviet forces' success, Rotmistrov's commitment of a tank corps in costly urban fighting (along with earlier disagreements with his Front commander, Ivan Chernyakhovsky) led to his replacement as commander of 5th Guards Tank Army.

The battle was also marked by an uprising under the code-name Operation Ostra Brama by the Polish Home Army, in expectation of the arrival of the Red Army, as part of Operation Tempest. It should be noted that the accounts of the battle given by the Home Army differ from the official Soviet account, particularly with regard to the date of Soviet entry into Vilnius.

While the German aim of holding Vilnius as a Fester Platz or fortress was not achieved, the tenacious defence made a contribution in stopping the Red Army's drive west for a few precious days: most importantly, it tied down the 5th Guards Tank Army, which had been instrumental in the initial successes of the Red Army during Operation Bagration. This delay gave German forces a chance to re-establish something resembling a continuous defence line further to the west. Hitler recognised this achievement by awarding Stahel the 76th set of Oak Leaves to the Knights Cross awarded during the war. Nevertheless, the outcome fell far short of what the German command had hoped for, and the continuous frontline that was established only held for a few weeks. Without the traffic network based on Vilnius, the German position in the southern Baltics was untenable.

Most of the few remaining Jewish residents of Vilnius, who had been afforded some measure of protection by the actions of a Wehrmacht officer, Karl Plagge, were murdered by the SS as Soviet forces approached the city. Plagge was however able to issue a coded warning which resulted in around 250 lives being saved.

• Operation Bagration
• Karl Plagge
• Roza Shanina

1. ^ Official Soviet accounts, and later accounts based on them, speak of a very large number of German troops being parachuted into the city several days into the siege before being wiped out as they landed. German orders of battle do not show such troops. It is possible the accounts are in fact referring to the small number of troops from the 16th Parachute Regiment participating in the defence; other elements of the same unit were present in the relief force.
2. ^ Glantz, p.160

• Glantz, D. (ed.) 'Belorussia 1944 - the Soviet General Staff Study'

• Liberation of Vilna Soviet footage of the battle at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum